MIDNIGHT QUEST: A Short 'Men of Midnight' Novel (17 page)

And frightened that however many precautions she might take, she’d one day make a mistake and he would find her and kill her. And she would die alone and unloved.

Lauren smiled. Jacko, that night, had loved her right out of her fear and panic, had filled her head and body with heat, with power.

She remembered undressing him. He’d let her undress him so she’d feel she had power. But she’d felt that anyway. His entire body—strong and powerful—had been placed at her service. He didn’t make a move until she initiated it.

That first sight of him naked—wow. Amazing. He worked out but he didn’t have those swollen, artificial-looking muscles bodybuilders sported. He just looked like he’d been born strong and had kept himself in shape. And those tattoos…God. She knew he had tattoos—barbed wire tats around his wrists. They’d been sexy enough. But he had a huge tribal tattoo covering one shoulder, flowing down over his chest, a swirl encircling a nipple.

Her vagina had contracted when she’d seen that, a totally involuntary reaction of her body to this amazingly strong and virile man. His body had reacted too. When her gaze raked down over his chest down to his groin, to his amazingly large and erect penis, her look alone had made him bigger, thicker. He’d swelled impossibly when she confessed she hadn’t had sex in a long while.

Being on the run for your life would do that.

And the first thing he’d said was that he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d been as gentle as possible that first time. Gentle and tender and loving.

After which they’d had sex so hot, it should have been illegal.

God.

She missed him so much. With anyone else, she might have pleasured herself into sleep. It was what she’d done those two years hiding from Jorge. Sometimes when she was particularly lonely or particularly afraid, with no one to hold her, she’d touch herself until she had a short orgasm. Like a little blip on radar. Nothing like what Jacko gave her.

She couldn’t touch herself now, not even missing him so very much. It was as if her body belonged to him.

But she was attuned to him, and she felt something change, like a change in the molecules of the air. A lodestone shifting. The center of her universe aligning.

Jacko was coming back to her. She could feel it. Soon, he would be back with her and her world would be complete. Smiling, Lauren slipped gently into sleep.

In a Motel 6 outside Fresno, California

Jacko’s eyes opened suddenly. Like all SEALs he’d been trained to be instantly alert and aware upon awakening. He lay still, as he always did. In the field, making noise when waking up could be fatal. More times than he could count he’d waited in a hide for days to take a shot. Once, he’d hidden in a tree for three days. So he’d trained himself to wake up and remain still.

There was something about waking up now…he looked around, moving only his eyes. A motel room. Motel, not hotel. He could hear highway noises right outside his window. The room smelled clean, looked entirely anonymous by the lights of the streetlamps outside filtering in through the thin curtains.

Nothing strange about the room.

He hadn’t dreamed
. That was it. These past nights his sleep had been restless and he’d had nightmares every time he’d closed his eyes. Monsters killing Lauren, Lauren dying, blood and pain. He’d woken up sweating and terrified. He was never terrified, not while awake anyway. These dreams—these nightmares—caught him by surprise, with creatures boiling up from the depths of his subconscious, representing his deepest terror. The terror of losing Lauren.

Right now he felt…fine. More than fine. He’d slept enough to feel rested, and he was ready to get back on the road.

More than anything else, though, he felt happy. Happier even than these past months of living with Lauren, which had been just amazing. Because, well, there was going to be more of that. The rest of his life, in fact. And there was going to be a child.

For the very first time, panic didn’t fill his head at that thought.

A kid. His kid and Lauren’s kid. Man.

A girl.
A little girl
. A ferocious desire for a little girl rose up in him, fierce and unstoppable and huge. A little girl. Small and delicate, like Lauren. Beautiful and smart. Oh God, he’d get to watch her grow up. Love her and protect her, make sure she was raised by two loving parents. And the ASI family—she’d have a billion affectionate aunts and uncles. Cousins coming out of her ears because Joe and Isabel were already talking about having kids, as were Metal and Felicity. It was early for Jack and Summer, but Jack had grown up in a big, loving family and he’d want kids. A lot of them.

Jacko could see it. A passel of kids, swarming in and out of each other’s houses.

Before Lauren, none of this would have held any appeal to him, none at all. Kids were liabilities, walking pieces of your heart right out there in the open, subject to life’s violence and pain. Like having hostages just waiting for enemies to use against you.

But right now, Jacko didn’t have any enemies. Lauren didn’t either. All they had around them were friends, people who cared about them. Who’d care for their kid, too.

Jacko had never seen the need for families. As far as he could tell, families were there to fuck people up. Shrinks wouldn’t have a job if families weren’t so crappy. Jacko had made the Navy his family and it had worked out just fine. So a family of his own hadn’t been in the cards. Hadn’t even been on the horizon

And then Lauren had come along and changed everything.

It was dark outside. It was barely four in the morning. He had a little under twelve hours of driving to go, but Jacko lay in bed, totally relaxed, staring up at the dark ceiling and letting the thought of their child wash over him. He saw scenes—holding a little newborn. Her first steps, running into his arms. He’d measure his life not by how old he was getting, but by how much she was growing.

A whole lifetime of love, with Lauren and their kid. More kids, too. Why the hell not? Yeah. A big family. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass? Jacko Jackman, head of a clan.

Well, stranger things had happened.

The thought was weird but not repellant. Nothing was repellant about his life, actually. He had a great woman, a great job. He had plenty of money and was surrounded by friends. And he was going to be a father.

None of this had been even remotely in his head when he’d joined the Navy. He’d enlisted as soon as legally possible, hoping only to get away from his mother, get out of Cross. Mostly he’d been hoping to be among people who weren’t killing themselves slowly. He wanted to be among people who weren’t messed up. The bar was low as far as his ambitions went.

Get out of Cross. Stay alive. Have three squares a day and a bed. Three hots and a cot, as they used to say.

And now look at him.

The future didn’t just look bright, it beckoned to him. Good times ahead and people with him to share the bad times. A family. A nuclear family that was all his. And a broader one, of people who cared for him.

There were no shadows left in him at all. Not even the ones he’d carried with him all his life. He felt freed of ancient hurts, like slipping off handcuffs and chains that he’d been dragging around since childhood.

For the first time in his life, he felt safe. Not because the world had become a better place, no way. The world was shitty. Always had been, always would be. He felt safe because he had people to love and who loved him and he had people at his back, just as he had theirs.

It was still dark but he was raring to go. There was a coffee machine and vending machine selling pure crap in the lobby. He’d grab a bad coffee and something filled with chemicals and get going. Lauren would have a heart attack if she knew he was loading up on carbs and chemicals, but it would shave some time off the trip. Later he’d stop at a drive-through and get a burger and fries.

Nothing like the spectacular food he got at home. But still, he had the rest of his life to eat healthy. Right now, all he wanted was to make good time.

Jacko was revved to the max.

Time to go home.

Green Orchards Retirement Home

There was a whole goddamn weather system in his head. Sometimes it was foggy and rainy and sometimes the sun came out. This morning, the sun was out and he could see clearly. Think clearly. He’d been agitated last night and they’d upped his dosage of the pills they thought kept him calm, but they didn’t. They just made him confused.

Kurt Pendleton knew when to take the pills and when not to. Last night, he didn’t. And this morning he could think straight.

Yesterday had been a shock that rocked him. The man he’d known and admired so many years ago, here to see him. But damn, it wasn’t
him
. Dante Jimenez. Pendleton couldn’t figure it out. The man was right there in front of him but…not. And he wasn’t responding the way he was supposed to.

Pendleton admired Jimenez, always had. A law enforcement legend and the best agent the DEA ever had. The man had had a dangerous job and had cojones big as boulders to go in undercover and rise through the ranks until he became old man Villalongo’s right-hand man. And Carlos Villalongo had spent so many years trying to get revenge. He’d kill—and he
had
killed—to get a bead on Dante.

If he’d had even a breath of suspicion that Dante had a son…

Pendleton had worked hard, trying to protect Dante all these years, hadn’t he? He’d hid Jacko from the Villalongo clan and then rushed Jacko away from Cross as soon as he could legally join the military. And here Dante was. Except he wasn’t. Dante but not Dante.

The puzzle kept him awake most of the night. And then the clouds parted and he could see the entire picture.

Not Jimenez. His son, Jacko. All grown up and the spitting image of his famous father. Who knew nothing about him.

That secret that had burned a hole in his heart for the past—how many years was it? He tried to calculate it but gave up. A long time, that was the answer. He’d kept the secret a long time.

Maybe too long.

Maybe the son coming to see him was a sign that he should let go.

He knew that the clouds in his head came more often now, created a thicker fog every time they came. The time would come when—Pendleton looked at it clearly for the first time—when he wouldn’t have the option of telling Jimenez because he wouldn’t remember.

Pendleton was the only one who knew. The only one in the world who could unite these two after so many years. The only one who could right a wrong decades old. Once he was gone, it would be lost. Jacko would never know who his father was. Dante would never know he had a son.

In the years during which he’d sheltered the young boy, Pendleton had been certain he was doing the right thing. The boy would have been in deadly danger if it was known he was Dante Jimenez’s son. But the man he’d seen, the man who was the spitting image of his father, looked tough as nails. A hard man to kill, just as his father was.

Already he could feel the encroaching darkness at the edges of his mind. By this afternoon, he would be lost. How many times could he come back? Maybe this was his last shot at clearheadedness, the last time he could do this.

And if not today, soon. Because soon the clouds would eat him up and there would be only darkness.

A tear tracked down his weather-beaten face. That was something else about this goddamned thing he had. His emotions—they were all over the goddamned place. At times it felt like he was drowning in feelings he couldn’t control. They shook him like a hurricane, blinding him to the outside world.

Shame, fear, panic—they roiled inside him, an unstoppable storm.

He came to in his chair, starting awake. The storm was over, the clouds gone. Peering at his watch, he saw two hours had gone by. The periods of clarity were becoming shorter and shorter. Soon, he knew, they would be gone forever.

Use this time while you can
, he thought. Because maybe he’d been wrong about keeping the truth from Jimenez. The boy had suffered, that was for sure.

Though the man who’d visited him didn’t look like he was suffering. He’d turned into a fine man, just like his father.